BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

THE BODY AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL 215
to which these forms do not apply. In making these claims one may easily
get the impression that Kant is speaking from a point beyond the
empirical world. The same applies to the transcendental theory by which
he purports to explain how our representations of this empirical world
are constituted. Although Kant maintains that there is no way in which
we can escape our subjective forms of experience, nevertheless he seems
to have discovered a method (in the form of a transcendental reflection)
by which such a position may still be reached, a position from which we
may explain transcendentally how our representations are constituted,
without including in our explanation anything empirical.
In this chapter I shall argue, however, that despite how it may seem,
Kant’s transcendental idealism does not demand that we adopt an
interpretation like this one. Another interpretation of this idealism is
possible according to which we may both maintain all its basic doctrines
and at the same time, without inconsistency, conceive of the cognitive
agent of the Critique as embodied and the transcendental psychology
associated with this agent as referring to embodied acts and events.
Actually, I shall argue that Kant’s transcendental idealism follows from a
line of reflection in which the embodied self and the embodied nature of
human cognition are basic premises. Within the context of this
interpretation, the idea of embodied cognition is not foreign to or
inconsistent with Kant’s transcendental idealism. On the contrary,
because it is a premise underlying transcendental idealism, in promoting
this idealism Kant both accepts and presupposes that cognition is
embodied.
It may be argued that this strategy involves a vicious circularity. In
order to defend the idea that the embodied mind has a central place
within Kant’s transcendental philosophy I argue that transcendental
idealism may be seen as the end product of a line of reflection taking as
its starting point the idea that the human mind and human cognition is
embodied. Thus I assume what is to be proved. However, I have already
given independent arguments in support of the idea that the cognitive
agent of the Critique is an embodied self and that its cognition is
embodied. This is not an ad hoc hypothesis suddenly introduced at this
point. Secondly, my immediate aim in this chapter is not to supply
further proofs for this idea. My aim is more modestly to argue that it is
not contradicted by Kant’s transcendental idealism, if only we
understand it in the right way.
The following discussion will touch upon topics that have been
extensively discussed in Kant scholarship, such as the relation between
empirical objects and things in themselves. I will reflect upon my position
relative to this discussion towards the end of this chapter. First, however,